POSITAL announces 2- and 4-wire versions of the single-cable BiSS Line interface for motor feedback kit encoders

March 1, 2019 – POSITAL announced the full implementation of  2- and 4-wire versions of the single-cable BiSS Line interface for its family of motor feedback kit encoders. The combination of single-cable connectivity and POSITAL’s kit encoders provides motor manufacturers, machine builders and system integrators a way of building absolute position feedback into devices such as servo-motors, stepper motors and robotic joints.

With the 4-wire version, there are separate wire pairs for power and data transmission, both wire pairs packaged in a single cable. For 2-wire implementations, modulated data signals share the conductor pair with the power supply. By supporting both 2- and 4-wire implementations of the BiSS Line interface, POSITAL ensures compatibility with PLCs and controllers from most major manufacturers. The company also supports BiSS C multi-cable interfaces.

Interfaces for POSITAL’s kit encoders make use of the BiSS series of open-source data communications protocols, a set of technologies that offer features, including Forward Error Correction. FEC, based on Reed-Solomon coding, can detect and correct transmission errors at the receiver. This ensures availability of the interface, even under difficult environmental conditions, and makes it possible to use hybrid motor cables, even where motor brakes are used. The BiSS implementation of FEC has a bus cycle time of 62.5 µs. Device configuration is handled for BiSS C, BiSS Line 2-wire and BiSS Line 4-wire implementations, allowing customers to migrate between the physical configurations without having to make application-level software changes. BiSS technology can be licensed from the BiSS Association e.V at no cost.